Former DA ran powerful death-penalty machine

MR. LAW & ORDERJohnny Holmes says he's proud of his record

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Johnny Holmes, who was Harris County's district attorney for 21 years, bluntly rebuffs critics who say his prosecutors were overzealous in seeking the death penalty.

Johnny Holmes, who was Harris County's district attorney for 21 years, bluntly rebuffs critics who say his prosecutors were overzealous in seeking the death penalty.

Photo: LARRY REESE, CHRONICLE

Former DA ran powerful death-penalty machine

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KENNEY — When it came to law and order, there never was time to spare. And when Johnny Holmes, Harris County's straight-arrow prosecutor, bolted from his bed well before dawn to battle crime, he never harbored doubts about what should be done to miscreants who preyed on society or where they should go.

Holmes spent 10 years rising through the ranks. After he became district attorney in September 1979, he created one of the biggest, most powerful prosecutorial machines in the nation. By his retirement 21 years later, Holmes' staff had almost doubled to 230 lawyers and his budget had swelled to more than $32 million.

Juries, moved by skillful, hard-nosed prosecution, sent thousands of criminals to Texas prisons, more than 200 of them to death row. And the vast majority of the 100 killers who have visited the death chamber courtesy of Harris County juries, including Lonnie Johnson who was put to death Tuesday, were prosecuted by Holmes or his staff.

Holmes is proud of that record and bluntly rebuffs critics who charge that his prosecutors were overzealous, especially in seeking the death penalty.

"That is what they are supposed to be — zealous in seeking justice," he said.

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Gentleman rancher

Holmes has lost little of his feisty self-confidence in the almost seven years he's been out of office.

Still rising daily at 4 a.m., he habitually monitors his police band radio even though his retirement ranch home in Austin County normally is far from the scene of crimes. His
e-mail address bears the moniker "crimefighter."

But at 67, Holmes admits he now is more concerned with fixing fences, reading clouds for signs of rain and helping his wife, Diane, bottle-feed orphaned deer.

To Kenney residents, Harris County's rigidly righteous former district attorney simply is the genial gentleman rancher with the outrageous mustache, Texas flag-patterned shirt and knack for telling stories.

When he's in an expansive mood, Holmes can regale locals at the country store with yarns from his days as a commercial pilot — he got his license at 14 — and the pride he took in receiving a prize for becoming the "most improved" student in law school. He credits his late father, John B. Holmes Sr., a Houston drilling contractor, with instilling in him a profound respect for the law.

"I never wanted be a lawyer," Holmes, who holds a law degree from the University of Houston, tells them. "I wanted to be a prosecutor."

In Houston, Holmes' career has grown to mythic proportions. Lawyers swap tales of his prodigious capacity for work and his single-mindedness in prosecuting criminals. His tough-on-crime legacy remains a controversial touchstone in debates of criminal justice policy.

"He ran the DA's office like Patton ran the Third Army," said U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, who worked with, then for, Holmes as a prosecutor before becoming a state district judge. "They were efficient and they were always moving forward."

Poe said Holmes could — and did — outwork anybody on the district attorney's staff.

The early years

Appointed to fill the unexpired term of former District Attorney
Carol Vance
, Holmes lost no time in setting the tone of his administration. Within months of taking office, he fired a young prosecutor accused of stealing a $12 gas cap for his car. Holmes called the episode "regrettable." Later, when a relative was arrested for DWI, Holmes steadfastly declined to intervene. Holmes himself religiously kept his speedometer at 55 mph.

Holmes boasts that he tried 44 felonies in the 182nd District court in one year — more than any prosecutor in any court in a 12-month period.

As district attorney, a largely administrative position, Holmes continued to argue capital cases. He handled almost every case in which law enforcement officers were the victims, not to mention high-profile cases such as that of Angel Maturino Resendiz, the rail-riding serial killer thought to have slaughtered as many as 13 people. Resendiz was executed in June 2006.

"Houston went through a period of time when there were violent armed robberies," Poe said, alluding to Holmes' early years in office. "He had a police scanner and, in the middle of the night, he would go to the scene of the crime."

Fiercely Independent

Former assistant district attorney
George Secrest
called Holmes "the antithesis of the typical district attorney."

"He was a man of immense integrity," said Secrest, now a criminal defense lawyer. Though a Republican, Holmes was fiercely independent, Secrest said. "Never before or since have we seen such independence," he said. "He would pretty well told you to go to hell if you deserved it."

Secrest, though, took sharp exception to the fervor with which Holmes-era prosecutors pushed for the death penalty in capital cases.

"For him it was just a good way to get the SOBs off the street," Secrest said. "It's a horrible failed policy. ... For prosecutors, those cases are usually easy. Usually they have confessions. By and large, they're playing to a sympathetic jury population. His legacy will be shackled to that for a long time."

'One of the toughest'

David Berg
, a veteran civil and criminal defense lawyer, called Holmes "one of the toughest I ever dealt with."

"Even before crime escalated in the '80s, Johnny was very hard-line as a prosecutor," Berg said. "He had very little give. In his view, bad guys should go to jail."

Holmes defended his department's handling of capital cases, noting that the final decision to seek the death penalty in such instances was his.

Bert Graham, who served as Holmes' first assistant district attorney and now fills the same position for District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal, said prosecutors seek the death penalty in about 20 percent of capital cases. "We go after only the worst of the worst," he said, "the ones we believe will kill someone else."

When prosecutors seek the death penalty, juries respond by ordering execution about 80 percent of the time, Graham said.

Clash with critics

As long as Texas law provides for a death penalty, Holmes said, prosecutors have the obligation to carry it out.

Holmes was destined to clash with outside critics of the state's death penalty.

"I haven't much patience with people who say our laws are barbaric," he said. Within the parameters of the Constitution, he noted, state lawmakers can make laws as they think best.

Holmes rarely seeks to participate in debates on the death penalty, regarding beliefs on the matter as part of an individual's private system of moral values.

Still, he personally believes there are "proper cases" where the death penalty is an appropriate sentence.

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"Obviously," he added, "what is a proper case is not ultimately up to the prosecutor, but to the fact-finders."